https://www.lexx.gr Hip Hop music and blogging Sun, 08 Mar 2026 10:30:56 +0000 el daily 1 https://www.lucentcms.com/ https://lexx.gr/blog/post/rip-don-greco https://lexx.gr/blog/post/rip-don-greco Δεν θυμάμαι πως γνώρισα τον Don Greco αλλά δεν θα ξεχάσω ποτέ το πρώτο μου live στο Woodstock το 1999 περίπου. Δεν μιλάμε για το Woodstock που ξέρουν όλοι αλλά για εκείνο που ξέρουν λίγοι. Ένα club στο Περιστέρι. Είχαμε ηχογραφήσει το πρώτο μας κομμάτι στο studio του και μας κάλεσε να παίξουμε live. Ήμασταν τότε παιδιά ακόμα, πηγαίναμε σχολείο. Ήταν πάντα πολύ γλυκός άνθρωπος και μας βοήθησε πολύ. Μου είχε κάνει εντύπωση πόσο καλός ήταν στο break dance παρά το γεγονός ότι μου έριχνε 20 χρονάκια. Θυμάμαι αργότερα πηγαίναμε στο studio του, σε ένα ημιυπόγειο στην Κυψέλη. Είχαμε καλέσει έναν Βρετανό για να κάνει φωνητικά στο ρεφρέν ενός τραγουδιού μας. Αναγνωρίζω ότι ήμασταν εντελώς ανώριμοι, αλλά είχαμε πέσει στο πάτωμα και δάκρυζαν τα μάτια μας στην προσπάθεια να μην ξεσπάσουμε σε γέλια με το performance του. Και οι 4. O Don G και εμείς οι 3 του group. Ο Βρετανός δεν είχε πιάσει την φάση του hip-hop και ήταν λίγο extra σουρεάλ. Ακούγοντας το κομμάτι ξανά μετά από 20 και βάλε χρόνια, ο Don G είχε κάνει τα μαγικά του. Ένας Ελβετός rapper, producer, b-boy, hustler στην Ελλάδα των 90s. Ήσουν φανταστικός Don G. Σε ευχαριστώ για όλα. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuWVBLpg_yc Wed, 24 May 2023 18:27:29 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/ok-cloudflare-i-am-leaving https://lexx.gr/blog/post/ok-cloudflare-i-am-leaving Cloudflare decided that customers like myself are no longer that important. What happened? First working day of the year and I find out that all my subdomains that operate as image proxies are banned. I opened a ticket and 1 hour later (surprisingly fast) a very vague reply arrived. To summarize: "My non-html content is disproportionate to my html content." I tried to explain that this is normal. I mean, our service consists of an HTTP API, Front ends and of course images. 8 hour later I received a similar response, asking me to remove non-html content first and then they are going to evaluate the situation. In the meantime I was in the process of migrating out of cloudflare all my image related services. My clients were furious of course and so was I. How can I explain them what happened? I replied back: "I have already done that. But please let me understand first. Having a pro plan on cloudflare means that I cannot proxy images for my service and only serve non-image content? How does that work and how can I monitor if I am complying. Because as you can understand I cannot play my reputation to my customers on dice. You have to be crystal clear on what you are providing to me as a customer. Your rules are vague and unsuitable for running a critical business." ## The other side of this story. We use [Imageboss](https://imageboss.me/) for all our image manipulation needs. During our migration out of cloudflare we had some difficulties with their service. I reached out to them and within an hour they helped us go through this migration and really saved the day for us. A really huge "thank you" to Igor for treating us with professionalism. I am sure that cloudflare can do anything they like with their Terms of Use. This post is not about that, nor my frustration with their handling. The problem is that small businesses cannot depend on huge providers like google or cloudflare. On the other hand, other small businesses like Imageboss were humane, professional and could really help us when we were in need. It's still possible to have control of your infrastructure but we are heading to a future where this becomes more and more difficult. I really liked cloudflare but always had on the back of my mind that I have to be ready for something like that. And I was. I just didn't believe they would be so disrespectful, inconsiderate and simply bad for business. Discussion on [Hacker news](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34235237) Tue, 03 Jan 2023 17:54:01 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/walking-in-memphis https://lexx.gr/blog/post/walking-in-memphis Marc Cohn wrote one of my all-time favorites songs. I was 11yo back in the mid 90s, listening to "Walking in Memphis". I had no Idea what Beale was. I hardly knew Memphis. But I've heard of it, because my favorite NBA player went in College there. <p align="center"> <img src="https://img.lucentcms.com/a909e08a-2968-4df0-979e-c6e3adede802/59983-si13bk-61fda0e7c0e71.jpg?o=height&d=245" alt="Penny Hardaway Upperdeck card in Memphis"/> </p> I was singing along having no idea who Muriel was, or reverend Green. You can't blame me for Muriel^{[<a href="#fn1">1</a>]}. Today reading the background story myself, I found out that reverend Green was the Al Green. I discovered Al Green in Florence 20 years ago inside a car. The song playing from the car's audio system was... Simply Beautiful. I am reading the lyrics without the music. I can't ignore the fact that Al Green doesn't need the lyrics, the lyrics need Al. Sometimes I think what an interesting image that is. A little boy vacationing with his family in rural Greece; listening from a Walkman, a custom made compilation cassette. One of his picks is "Walking in Memphis" and he is obsessed with it. I bet Marc could not imagine this while walking in Beale street around the year I was born. References and associations are a powerful concept. I was a kid, someone gifted me a Rock Compilation CD^{[<a href="#fn2">2</a>]}. I saw a title containing the word Memphis. I knew Memphis from Penny Hardaway. The piano comes in and then a guy sounded like Joe Cocker, which I knew. I bet if Wikipedia was a thing back then, I would definitely be in a path to explore Al Green immediately. My father, as the proper nerd that he is, made sure we had as PC and an internet connection even back in the early 90s. Wikipedia was not a thing, but Music Central was.  Music Central series, was an amazing source of knowledge for me, especially the short clips that included parts of songs or live performances. I discovered so much there. Artists like the Dire Straits and Patti Smith. For example it included a part of [This performance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OjW1TDANxk). I couldn't get enough of those clips. Footnotes: 1. The background of the song is an inspiring story about inspiration <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_in_Memphis" id="fn1">Walking in Memphis From Wikipedia</a> 2. <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/1258537-Various-Rock-Anthems-Volume-2" id="fn2">Rock Anthems</a> Fri, 04 Feb 2022 23:24:47 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/my-companys-tech-stack https://lexx.gr/blog/post/my-companys-tech-stack The following tools and services are used by my web agency ([Radical Elements](https://www.radical-elements.com/)) the last 3-5 years. We selected them after a lot of research. So I thought to share a few words. ## [Basecamp](https://basecamp.com/) I am going to be totally honest. I don't enjoy Basecamp. The fact that I don't hate it makes it special. Because I really detest most of the rest. It's a product that you can work your way around it's limitations. The fact that I can avoid using Slack, gdocs and other services is huge. Also it's design is weird. I don't like it but I prefer it from the boilerplate design that every other app seems to have nowadays. Last year we did a research as a company, to move to another platform. After a thorough evaluation of 10+ project management tools, we ended up back to reorganizing our Basecamp account. ## [Bitwarden](https://bitwarden.com/) We needed a team password management with sane pricing. We migrated from a Keepass Database shared in Dropbox to Bitwarden. The reviews were good, the whole product seemed legit. The UI is decent. There are clients for all the platforms we care about. We are happy there. Thanks Bitwarden. ## [Linode](https://www.linode.com/) I am a customer since 2010. I am really happy with this company. I always have a bad feeling about AWS, so I try stay away. Not a lot to say. Great service. ## [Migadu](https://www.migadu.com/) Migadu is an email inbox provider. What made me choose them is that they don't charge per domain or per inbox. They charge for your usage. So that pricing model is ideal for an agency that wants to resell their service. It gives us flexibility. Also their UI was and is fast, simple and not boilerplate. I am really happy with migadu. ## [Postmark](https://postmarkapp.com/) We switched to Postmark this year. I love the fact that their product came as a result of their need. They are not an inflated ventured backed company. Their product is polished and their pricing reasonable. So far, so good. It's great for transactional emails and also for email testing. Mon, 16 Aug 2021 12:25:39 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/markdown-editor-and-browser-spell-checking https://lexx.gr/blog/post/markdown-editor-and-browser-spell-checking Here is the problem. I needed a minimal and stable Markdown editor for my project [LucentCMS](https://www.lucentcms.com/). I was already using [Codemirror](https://codemirror.net/) for the code fields, so I though why not use the same library for markdown fields. The good news is that Codemirror does have a Markdown mode, which is working pretty well in my opinion. The bad news is that is didn't seem to support the browser's native spellchecking. I decided to start looking for other markdown editors but sadly I couldn't find even one with native spellchecking support, except StackEdit. But, StackEdit was an overkill for my scenario. Anyway, after some searching I found [this thread](https://discuss.codemirror.net/t/inputstyle-contenteditable-we-may-hope-for-browser-spell-checking/608/3) and it works great. You just have to set the following in your Codemirror config ```json { inputStyle: "contenteditable", spellcheck: true } ``` Your only concern would be older browsers. Sat, 14 Aug 2021 14:44:06 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/aseprite-is-so-much-fun https://lexx.gr/blog/post/aseprite-is-so-much-fun MS Paint to Krita and now Aseprite. That's indisputable evidence that tools don't make the artist. I continue to be extremely not good in every single one of them.  Tue, 19 Jan 2021 12:11:00 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/the-face-of https://lexx.gr/blog/post/the-face-of  Fri, 08 Mar 2019 12:29:00 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/drawing-in-krita https://lexx.gr/blog/post/drawing-in-krita I evolved as an MS Paint artist to a Krita artist. I have also purchased a drawing tablet. I hear you say wow. ### Everything is possible  ### Balkonaki  ### Shut your eyes  ### Self-compassion  ### Tearz  ### Following  Sat, 30 Jun 2018 11:06:00 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/shit-habits https://lexx.gr/blog/post/shit-habits The human evolution  Wed, 23 May 2018 11:12:00 +0000 https://lexx.gr/blog/post/i-cant-paint-but-who-cares https://lexx.gr/blog/post/i-cant-paint-but-who-cares ... I don't. There are times in life where I feel sad because tragic stuff happens. But that's understandable. There are sometimes though, where everything is seemingly fine and I am sad and stressed. And that is confusing. My therapist is trying hard to help me but that is her problem. Here are some drawings that helped me during uninvestigated stress. I am proud of them, even though I probably shouldn't: ### frog off  ### sleeping  ### social pills  ### faery jump  ### her sunset  ### lucid tree  Sun, 20 May 2018 17:12:00 +0000